Pandaminer B3+ Review - Why you should never buy a Pandaminer B3+ / B1

[VoskCoin]

Hey guys I put together a review video on my Pandaminer B3+
https://youtu.be/sefJNg8Bv5I

I saw some promising reviews and specs on the pandaminer gpu eth zec xmr mining rig, so I began my quest to attain one. .  They were flying through their pre-orders in seconds / minutes selling 1000+ panda miners . .  it was tough to acquire. I reached out to the Virginia Pandaminer Distributor and he was able to get me a panda miner however at the BTC price he wanted, I ended up paying about $3000 dollars for a Pandaminer B3+ at the end of May.

Long story short some of these pandaminers are catching fire, going up in flames is ridiculous because their production was rushed and just cheap. You can read more about the latest panda miner fire here
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1946017.0

My pandaminer worked for about a week before at this point my understanding is that windows updated and now does not recognize the GPU

SMOS did not work for me and tytanick states he does not support pandaminers

pandamOS by eliovp is promising however his current version did not work for me, he will begin working on a fix this weekend

List goes on, watch the videos for full details, I do not recommend this miner.





I'll update later as I'm determined to make this thing work, any input on getting it running correctly would be more than welcome.

Update
Here is my second pandaminer . . I am also experiencing issues with this b3+
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1_UTgt9fbxg

[bentcrypto]

Dam...I didn't know smOS doesn't work with the B3. I already sent drives pre-loaded to the hosting company.
Thanks for the heads up. Hopefully Eliovp will come to the rescue.
I refuse to use windows!

[Rabinovitch]

I new from the early appearance of these pandaminers that it can not be good stuff. Thanx for confirmations.

[virtexl]

This Windows update break driver thing happened to me too.  I talked to their tech support.  Found the solution:
Just go to Device Manager, manually "update drivers" that is placed in the C:\01\01 folder.  Then run the patcher.exe in the same folder.  Then disable all windows update (Google this).  And it'll work.

Also, smOS does work yes (I used the RX image on USB), just that it's not very stable, it reboots every hour or so.  So I'm back to Windows.

Also, if you use the new version of Claymore 9.x, you need to set -dcri 6 to get ~230MH/s, otherwise, it defaults to -dcri 30, and you get only 215  MH/s.

But all in all, I agree with you, it's not a good product.  I bought a few of them, I still have issues at this moment.  Like 1 card is stuck at 8MH/s, and 1 fan is not spinning, and 1 miner only sees 4 out of 8 cards after a week of running fine with 8, probably broken motherboard. 

I'm working with their tech support, so far they've been responsive and running tests, but I don't know how easy it would be to replace the faulty motherboard (in my opinion).

[bentcrypto]

Excellent info Virtexl...thanks mate!

[VoskCoin]

This Windows update break driver thing happened to me too.  I talked to their tech support.  Found the solution:
Just go to Device Manager, manually "update drivers" that is placed in the C:\01\01 folder.  Then run the patcher.exe in the same folder.  Then disable all windows update (Google this).  And it'll work.

Also, smOS does work yes (I used the RX image on USB), just that it's not very stable, it reboots every hour or so.  So I'm back to Windows.

Also, if you use the new version of Claymore 9.x, you need to set -dcri 6 to get ~230MH/s, otherwise, it defaults to -dcri 30, and you get only 215  MH/s.

But all in all, I agree with you, it's not a good product.  I bought a few of them, I still have issues at this moment.  Like 1 card is stuck at 8MH/s, and 1 fan is not spinning, and 1 miner only sees 4 out of 8 cards after a week of running fine with 8, probably broken motherboard. 

I'm working with their tech support, so far they've been responsive and running tests, but I don't know how easy it would be to replace the faulty motherboard (in my opinion).

Was this on B1 or b3+?,  glad they're working better with you I am still awaiting a response to my second email . . .

How can they advertise it as 237 mh/s and we are getting 215 mh/s . . it's a lie basically at that point?

Appreciate the input i'll give it a shot today, keep us posted on yours!

[VoskCoin]

Dam...I didn't know smOS doesn't work with the B3. I already sent drives pre-loaded to the hosting company.
Thanks for the heads up. Hopefully Eliovp will come to the rescue.
I refuse to use windows!

What batch are your pandas from? Agreed, I feel Eliovp is the only one who can save these damn pandas lol
Hope yours workout better than mine has thus far!

[VoskCoin]

I new from the early appearance of these pandaminers that it can not be good stuff. Thanx for confirmations.

Unfortunately you were right xD, thanks for watching!

[daadog]

I was thinking about getting one of these. Now I'm not so sure anymore...

Do you think they have fixed the problems in the newest batch ?

[VoskCoin]

This Windows update break driver thing happened to me too.  I talked to their tech support.  Found the solution:
Just go to Device Manager, manually "update drivers" that is placed in the C:\01\01 folder.  Then run the patcher.exe in the same folder.  Then disable all windows update (Google this).  And it'll work.

Also, smOS does work yes (I used the RX image on USB), just that it's not very stable, it reboots every hour or so.  So I'm back to Windows.

Also, if you use the new version of Claymore 9.x, you need to set -dcri 6 to get ~230MH/s, otherwise, it defaults to -dcri 30, and you get only 215  MH/s.

But all in all, I agree with you, it's not a good product.  I bought a few of them, I still have issues at this moment.  Like 1 card is stuck at 8MH/s, and 1 fan is not spinning, and 1 miner only sees 4 out of 8 cards after a week of running fine with 8, probably broken motherboard.  

I'm working with their tech support, so far they've been responsive and running tests, but I don't know how easy it would be to replace the faulty motherboard (in my opinion).

I tried this and it's still not accepting the cards / updates
Can you explain step by step so I may see if I missed something, but it's either telling me they're up to date or already patched

Device status is
Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems Code 43

Do I need to revert the windows version first? With all this headache I should have just built a rig for less! Lol

The only installed update on the uninstall an updated list was security update for adobe flash player

[dagarair]

the B1 has issues in heat and it will fry the PSU.  I swapped only B1 PSU for a different PS and there are no problems

If you fried your B3 its because of that shitty power inverter you have.  I have not had issues at all with them.

Not saying they are great, but they are ok.

[kodokbuduk]

This Windows update break driver thing happened to me too.  I talked to their tech support.  Found the solution:
Just go to Device Manager, manually "update drivers" that is placed in the C:\01\01 folder.  Then run the patcher.exe in the same folder.  Then disable all windows update (Google this).  And it'll work.

Also, smOS does work yes (I used the RX image on USB), just that it's not very stable, it reboots every hour or so.  So I'm back to Windows.

Also, if you use the new version of Claymore 9.x, you need to set -dcri 6 to get ~230MH/s, otherwise, it defaults to -dcri 30, and you get only 215  MH/s.

But all in all, I agree with you, it's not a good product.  I bought a few of them, I still have issues at this moment.  Like 1 card is stuck at 8MH/s, and 1 fan is not spinning, and 1 miner only sees 4 out of 8 cards after a week of running fine with 8, probably broken motherboard.  

I'm working with their tech support, so far they've been responsive and running tests, but I don't know how easy it would be to replace the faulty motherboard (in my opinion).

I tried this and it's still not accepting the cards / updates
Can you explain step by step so I may see if I missed something, but it's either telling me they're up to date or already patched

Device status is
Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems Code 43

Do I need to revert the windows version first? With all this headache I should have just built a rig for less! Lol

The only installed update on the uninstall an updated list was security update for adobe flash player

did you update the windows? try to use DDU to uninstall gpu driver. then install driver rx470 from philipma. not sure this work or not..

[dagarair]

download from AMD site 16.9.1 I know those work on a reload.

[VoskCoin]

the B1 has issues in heat and it will fry the PSU.  I swapped only B1 PSU for a different PS and there are no problems

If you fried your B3 its because of that shitty power inverter you have.  I have not had issues at all with them.

Not saying they are great, but they are ok.

The pandaminer distributor sold the transformer to me with the panda, for the record. How would I have fried it and if so how does a fried rig operate?

[VoskCoin]

download from AMD site 16.9.1 I know those work on a reload.

Did you have to reload drivers on your panda?

[VoskCoin]

This Windows update break driver thing happened to me too.  I talked to their tech support.  Found the solution:
Just go to Device Manager, manually "update drivers" that is placed in the C:\01\01 folder.  Then run the patcher.exe in the same folder.  Then disable all windows update (Google this).  And it'll work.

Also, smOS does work yes (I used the RX image on USB), just that it's not very stable, it reboots every hour or so.  So I'm back to Windows.

Also, if you use the new version of Claymore 9.x, you need to set -dcri 6 to get ~230MH/s, otherwise, it defaults to -dcri 30, and you get only 215  MH/s.

But all in all, I agree with you, it's not a good product.  I bought a few of them, I still have issues at this moment.  Like 1 card is stuck at 8MH/s, and 1 fan is not spinning, and 1 miner only sees 4 out of 8 cards after a week of running fine with 8, probably broken motherboard.  

I'm working with their tech support, so far they've been responsive and running tests, but I don't know how easy it would be to replace the faulty motherboard (in my opinion).

I tried this and it's still not accepting the cards / updates
Can you explain step by step so I may see if I missed something, but it's either telling me they're up to date or already patched

Device status is
Windows has stopped this device because it has reported problems Code 43

Do I need to revert the windows version first? With all this headache I should have just built a rig for less! Lol

The only installed update on the uninstall an updated list was security update for adobe flash player

did you update the windows? try to use DDU to uninstall gpu driver. then install driver rx470 from philipma. not sure this work or not..

I didn't and it's set to not update so I'm not sure?

[dagarair]

download from AMD site 16.9.1 I know those work on a reload.

Did you have to reload drivers on your panda?

Yeah on a few of them not all.  All updates were disabled but yet fookin windows pushed it anyway

[dagarair]

the B1 has issues in heat and it will fry the PSU.  I swapped only B1 PSU for a different PS and there are no problems

If you fried your B3 its because of that shitty power inverter you have.  I have not had issues at all with them.

Not saying they are great, but they are ok.

The pandaminer distributor sold the transformer to me with the panda, for the record. How would I have fried it and if so how does a fried rig operate?

That's why i said IF YOUR fried it.  You have a picture of a fried board on your first post.  These "distributors" are idiots btw.  Don't take anything they tell you as the truth hehe. 

[VoskCoin]

the B1 has issues in heat and it will fry the PSU.  I swapped only B1 PSU for a different PS and there are no problems

If you fried your B3 its because of that shitty power inverter you have.  I have not had issues at all with them.

Not saying they are great, but they are ok.

The pandaminer distributor sold the transformer to me with the panda, for the record. How would I have fried it and if so how does a fried rig operate?

That's why i said IF YOUR fried it.  You have a picture of a fried board on your first post.  These "distributors" are idiots btw.  Don't take anything they tell you as the truth hehe.  

I took his advice with a grain of salt but it appears he only became a distributor to fill his mining farm in china with well over 100 pandaminers

Pandaminer problem #27

Received a different pandaminer model today b3+ as well? It's only recognizing 6 gpu's . . . out of the box

[Loco Motive]

Don't they have like a 6 month warranty for those things?
I guess the miner catching on fire whould be covered by that